Search giant securely storing data captured from home Wi-Fi networks by Street View cars pending more specific instructions

Google is to retain data captured from UK home wireless networks while carrying out its Street View mapping until it receives more specific instructions from the UK Information Commissioner, it said today.

Update: the ICO said it has already told Google that the data can be deleted - but Google stated it will not do so yet.

The company also faces the threat from the advocacy group Privacy International that it might be liable under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) for unlawful interception of users' data and that the group may try to get the police to instigate an investigation.

Google is already facing criminal investigations in Germany over its capture of the data from open Wi-Fi networks and faces further investigations from a number of European countries for possible breaches of data protection laws and, possibly, computer hacking.

It has deleted the data that was collected in Ireland, Denmark and Austria, according to those countries' wishes. That means there cannot be any threat of prosecution in those countries as any evidence for a court case is unavailable.

In a statement released on Friday, the company said: "Following requests from the Irish, Danish and Austrian data protection authorities we can confirm that we have deleted payload data identified as coming from those countries. We can also confirm that, as requested, we are keeping data from Belgium, France, Italy, Spain, Germany, Switzerland and the Czech Republic.

"Given that there is some uncertainty about deletion generally for example, one data protection authority changed its instruction from delete to retain in the last 24 hours we think it makes sense to keep the remaining country data while we work through these issues."

Google later clarified that it is retaining the data for the UK so that the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) can inspect it as required. The data is being held in secure isolation. However the ICO restated that it has not required its preservation, reiterating a statement from earlier this week: "there does not seem to be any reason to keep the data concerned for evidential purposes. Therefore, in line with the data protection requirement that personal data should be held for no longer than necessary, we have asked Google to ensure that these data are deleted as soon as reasonably possible."

Google has insisted that it was trying to map the existence of the networks, which use the Wi-Fi standard, but that it accidentally left in computer code which collected actual data from unsecured networks.

German prosecutors have requested access to one of the hard drives used in the data gathering though Google has so far refused. German data protection officials have given the company until 26 May to hand over the system.

Google admitted last week that it collected 600GB of data from unsecured Wi-Fi networks around the world while collecting photos to Street View

The UK Information Commissioner Christopher Graham said on Thursday that the ICO did not want to "declare war" on Google over the matter and that it thought its response which was initially to accede to Google's offer to delete the data was "proportionate".

However, Google now appears to have decided to delay the deletion while it makes sure that no investigations have been opened; otherwise it might be deemed to have destroyed evidence.

Privacy International says that deleting the data would be "irresponsible" until its content has been investigated to see whether it does infringe the law. "We have directly put Google on notice that it is likely to be imminently subject to civil or criminal legal action as a result of the Wi-Fi interception," it wrote on its blog. "To eliminate the data would constitute destruction of evidence." It urged the ICO to rescind its earlier order to destroy the data: "We urge the commissioner to immediately rescind the order and allow Google to place the data in secure storage until such time as the legal questions are resolved.

"In the absence of a commitment from both Google and the commissioners to temporarily secure the data, Privacy International will seek a prosecution for unlawful interception under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act. In those circumstances there would be no question of destroying the data."

Updated with statement from UK ICO that it is not seeking retention of data.

Google 'smart TV' service offers web search and apps on television, starting with Sony products in the US

Google has launched a "smart TV" service, in conjunction with partners including Sony, that will allow viewers to search the web while watching programmes.

The service, called Google TV, will theoretically work with any TV set. However, the first products to incorporate the search capability will be developed by Sony and arrive on the US market from the autumn.

Google TV-enabled sets, which will feature an on-screen search box similar to the company's look and feel on the web, will allow people to search for web content and download applications as well as programming from across the internet.

"Over the past decade, the internet has created unprecedented opportunity for innovation and development across the world, but so far the web has largely been absent from living rooms," said Google. "Google TV expands video choice from the hundreds of channels available today through a pay TV provider to the vast storehouse of video content available through the web and streaming videos."

Partners at launch include Intel, the set-top box and peripherals company Logitech and Adobe, the maker of flash technology.

Google said it also plans to open source the Google TV platform to "help spur innovation in the industry and so that other developers can benefit from the project".

"The long-term goal is to collaborate with the entire developer community to help drive entertainment in the living room forward and to introduce the next generation of TV-watching experience," the company said.

paidContent:UK Culture secretary Jeremy Hunt says the new government will not repeal the controversial Digital Economy Act

Join Aleks Krotoski, Charles Arthur and Jemima Kiss as they dissect the latest fracas surrounding the privacy policies of web giants Facebook and Google. How much information do they have on their users and what are the business alternatives for these companies?

The team is also joined by Professor Stephen Coleman from University of Leeds who explains exactly what it is about government websites that makes e-participation more or less likely.

Charles grills Yahoo! chief executive Carol Bartz on the company's search and content intentions, while Jack Schofield talks to Microsoft corporate vice-president Jeff Teper about the latest version of the company's Office software.

There's also the latest on the Apple-Adobe soap opera, and company highlights of YouTube now that it's hit its fifth year.

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PS3/Xbox 360; 49.99; cert 18+; Rockstar

Losing yourself in Redemption is no bad thing. An open world extravaganza, your playground is the dying days of the Old West replete with deserts, cacti and homestead grasslands. As the in-game clock ticks by and day changes to night, the vivid hues of orange and brown are replaced with a star-studded sky interspersed with the glow of campfires.

A fully fleshed-out living world, events unfold around you. You can step in and stop gunfights, lynchings and rustling or choose to leave well alone. With fame and honour an integral part of the game, your every action affects your reputation. Be kind and become loved by the settlers, or turn outlaw and find your travels marred by run-ins with local sheriffs.

Compared with the preceding Red Dead Revolver, you gain a much stronger bond to the main character thanks to an immersive narrative. Reformed outlaw John Marston is on the path to redemption but gets dragged back into his old ways by The Bureau. Holding his family hostage, they force him to hunt down and kill his old brother in arms.

Cue missions involving the gameplay's mainstays shooting and horse riding. Combining the two aspects takes a while to master, but overall the controls are generally straightforward with triggers used for aiming and firing. Use of cover will help you survive shootouts, while ease of targeting depends on your chosen difficulty level. The Dead Eye mode one of the few remaining features from Red Dead Revolver will help you face off multiple opponents. This slow-motion shooting mechanic lets you tag multiple enemies before downing them in a blaze of glory.

Along with the main narrative there are side missions and challenges galore, giving you even more reason to explore the epic landscape. If you choose, you can happily spend hours honing your sharp-shooting skill, treasure hunting, or simply raking in the cash by playing poker in the local saloon. Throw in an online multiplayer experience where you not only fight, but can free roam with up to 16 friends, and you've got a heavyweight package with something for everyone.

Redemption is a slow burner with lots of travelling and exposition, but the engaging gameplay will keep you hooked. Comparisons will inevitably be drawn between this and Rockstar's GTA series, but even with structural similarities, it stands out as one of the best open world gaming experiences to date and is a clear contender for game of the year.

Rating: 5/5

Theresa May agrees adjournment of judicial review to consider whether Gary McKinnon is fit to be extradited to US

The extradition of the computer hacker Gary McKinnon has been put on hold after the home secretary, Theresa May, agreed to an adjournment of a judicial review that was supposed to start within days.

The move will allow May to begin formal consideration of the medical evidence to see whether McKinnon is fit to be extradited. If it is established that he cannot be allowed to go, it paves the way for a prosecution in the UK.

A Home Office spokesperson said: "The home secretary has considered the proposal from Gary McKinnon's legal team and has agreed an adjournment should be sought. An application to the court is being made today."

McKinnon's lawyer, Karen Todner, said she hoped May would make a decision on whether he was fit to be extradited in a matter of weeks.

Todner said: "The secretary of state, having recently taken office and having received further representations from the claimant's representatives, wishes to have appropriate time fully to consider the issues in the case." She said she hoped the decision was "a signal of a more compassionate and caring home secretary".

McKinnon's lawyers were granted permission for a judicial review last week having failed to win one last year into whether a decision by the former home secretary Alan Johnson to allow extradition and trial in the US breached McKinnon's human rights.

The judicial review was supposed to start next week and was virtually a last throw of the legal dice. Its adjournment allows May to cast a fresh eye on what has turned into a cause celebre, and to make a close examination of the extradition agreement between the US and the UK.

Legal experts said May's main difficulty would be to override her Home Office advisers.

"They will, perhaps, tell their minister that if she reverses the [Jacqui] Smith-Johnson decision, the Americans might take her to court for judicial review. But this is unreal: the Obama administration is unlikely to challenge, on behalf of a local state prosecutor, a decision of the new British government," Geoffrey Robertson QC wrote on the Guardian's Comment is free website, this week.

McKinnon's supporters believe the new coalition government is sympathetic to their cause as David Cameron and Nick Clegg have in the past publicly criticised plans to extradite McKinnon. Last year, Cameron said any trial should take place in the UK. He said there was "a clear argument to be made that he should answer [any questions] in a British court".

McKinnon admitted to hacking into 97 computers in the US defence department and Nasa from his London flat, and said he was looking for evidence of UFOs between 2001-2.

Despite a lengthy legal battle and strong public support for the Free Gary campaign, McKinnon has so far failed in his seven-year fight against extradition. His supporters argue that McKinnon has Asperger's syndrome and was driven only by an obsession with UFOs. The US government argues that his hacking attempts were a deliberate effort to breach American defence systems.

McKinnon's mother, Janis Sharp, called the development good news and said it was significant that the court process is now on hold.

"Overall I'm cautiously optimistic," she said. "It's a step in the right direction, but we really need to know that Gary will be staying here. Only then can we relax. In some ways this is almost the most difficult time. I've got hope for the first time and if that hope was dashed I don't know what I'd do.

"We've had this hanging over us for eight years. Some murderers get less than that. All he was doing was tapping away on a leyboard in Crouch End, being curious."

Sharp added that McKinnon was not in a good way: "He can't go out, watch anything about the case on TV. He's under the care of a psychiatrist."

The controversial case has crossed the desks of six home secretaries.

Scores of zombie accounts on the social network are being used to try to install a banking and keylogging Trojan - and many have fallen victim already

A malware attack is being spread via Twitter using "zombie" accounts to push a site which claims to link to a fun video.

Using the tagline "haha this is the funniest video ive EVER SEEN!", and a wide variety of Twitter hashtags, the website instead uses a Java exploit to drop a keylogger program and a banking Trojan (which will search your hard drive for any banking details and watch when you log in to online banking sites) on Windows computers that visit it.

The large number of accounts are being used to try to push the link onto trend-mapping sites that show popular links on Twitter.

F-Secure spotted the emergence of the threat today, and explained how it works. And it had a suggestion for how to avoid the problem: "Lesson of the day is probably this: do you really need Java in your browser?" asks the company. "Seriously, do you? If not, get rid of it."

The breadth of the attack indicates that the linked problems for Twitter - that it doesn't seek any authentication of accounts beyond an email - and URL shorteners, which can make it hard for people to know where they are going mean that users of these services have to be cautious when using Windows systems.

Bit.ly has been alerted to the threat from the link; presently its statistics indicate that there have been more than 1,630 clicks on the link - each of which means an infected computer and someone whose banking details are therefore at risk, and whose computer is a potential spam generator and botnet member.

If you have clicked on the link, you should immediately take your machine offline and scan it with an antivirus system.

If you need to check the final destination for a bit.ly URL, it's easy with bit.ly links: add a + to the link you're offered (eg http://bit.ly/b6Z3BC+, which shows the statistics for the URL for the dangerous site).

Other URL-shortening services can make it harder to check where you're being sent. Tinyurl offers a "preview" function, but it's always wise to look at any available information before continuing to a link from a source you don't completely trust.

Powerful gossip blogger to consider deal tabled by rivals Zack Taylor and Nik Richie, according to Gawker

Celebrity gossip blogger Perez Hilton has reportedly been offered $20m ( 14m) for his website PerezHilton.com.

Hilton, who Forbes recently named the biggest star on the web for the third year running, has been offered the deal by Hotornot.com owner Avid Life Media, according to a report on Gawker.com.

The blogger, real name Mario Lavandeira, would receive $18m upfront and another $2m following in a year, Gawker reported. The deal has been tabled by Avid Life Media in conjunction with Zack Taylor, the gossip blogger who runs ZackTaylor.ca, and Nik Richie who runs adult gossip site TheDirty.com.

According to the report a letter of intent has been submitted to Hilton's attorneys with a response pending.

If a purchase materialises, PerezHilton.com will be "operated" by Taylor and Richie which, speculates Gawker, could be used as a "sort of massive traffic-forwarding address to a new gossip site".

Avid Life Media paid $20m for Hotornot.com in 2008.

To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000.

If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly "for publication".

The Guardian today introduced the second phase of its Open Platform initiative, expanding the content-sharing service to commercial partners.

A comprehensive set of developer tools and resources, the commercial launch of Open Platform makes Guardian content available for advertisers and brands to tailor to specific online campaigns.

Open Platform provides a content application programming interface, or API, that makes Guardian content searchable and downloadable for use in external applications. A second resource is the Data Store statistics directory - detailed data curated by Guardian editors.

Launch partner Enjoy England used Open platform to build an interactive map of England plotting specially commissioned articles on places of interest alongside tips and photo uploads from readers.

Part of a wider campaign for Enjoy England, the map features Guardian content but could be published anywhere on the web, according to the plans of the campaign.

Access to the service is based on three levels: keyless, where headlines and basic data can be used without registration; approved, which allows full article content to be published; and bespoke, a customised service for licensing content and developing rich applications.

The first two allow partners to keep any revenue earned, while the bespoke service offers various revenue sharing deals through sponsorship, licensing and other commercial formats.

Guardian News and Media's consumer media director Adam Freeman said the service benefitted partners by providing access to a global audience of 33 million users each month, while offering an incentive of 50,000 in media spend to the next partner that spends more than 100,000.

"The commercial launch of the Guardian's Open Platform marks a unique and pivotal step forward for the online publishing landscape, and a new area of development for advertisers," he said.

"Not only will GNM's award-winning journalism and online content be able to reach new audiences, but other online publishers and brands will be able to use our content to develop more compelling digital campaigns, products and services.

The Guardian claims that Open Platform, which launched in beta last year, is a first for the newspaper industry. More than 2,000 developers have registered since the launch, creating more than 200 applications and products.

Today's launch is followed by a 24-hour developer challenge, sponsored by Amazon Web Services.

Series including South Park, Fawlty Towers and Planet Earth available on online '30-day rental' model

SeeSaw, the video-on-demand website born from the ashes of the failed Project Kangaroo, has launched a paid-for service with 1,000 hours of programming from 99p per episode up to 17.99 for a series.

The VoD operator, which is owned by Arqiva, officially launched in February offering 3,000 hours of free programming including Home and Away, Neighbours, Hollyoaks, Skins, Kingdom and Doc Martin. This programming will remain free.

SeeSaw has today unveiled 1,000 hours of new content as part of its subscription offering, including new deals with Comedy Central for programmes including South Park and MTV for shows such as The Hills and Laguna Beach.

The paid-for content also includes new BBC Worldwide shows such as Fawlty Towers, Planet Earth, Spooks, Top Gear, the Royle Family, Gavin & Stacey, I'm Alan Partridge and Only Fools and Horses. It is also thought that a deal has been struck with Disney to allow users to rent programming including Lost and Ugly Betty.

The company has launched a rental model that will allow single programmes to be rented for up to 30 days with 48 hours for viewing to be completed once a show has started to be watched. For whole series, viewers will have 90 days rental and 48 hours to complete the viewing of each episode.

Charges are between 99p and 1.19 per episode. For a series, prices will vary widely from 3.99 to 17.99 depending on the number of episodes in the series and how recently the programme has aired on TV.

The charging structure, and programming that users will have to pay for, is broadly similar to the regimes run by rival services such as Channel Five's Demand Five.

SeeSaw, which aims to be a "one-stop shop" for online TV programming, is planning to increase the amount of content to 5,000 hours and is already looking at widening its distribution beyond PCs.

Arqiva is one of the partners in Project Canvas, the joint venture to bring VoD content to digital viewers with Freeview and Freesat, which the Office of Fair Trading yesterday cleared of requiring a competition investigation.

To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000.

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We grumble about privacy on Facebook and Google, but the sharing of personal information online is second nature

I'm an inveterate oversharer. I tweet what I eat, I blog my baby photos, I check in on foursquare. It is second nature to me now. But even early adopters didn't start out this way. Most of us are resistant to new technology, and pick it up a few months, or years, down the line, when it seems more mainstream and relevant and when friends seem to be using it. That never happened more dramatically than with Facebook, which credits this "network effect" for an exponential increase in users after its launch in 2004 to the 500 million it is about to announce.

Five years ago a pseudonym was de rigueur, yet now we share the minutiae of what we're reading and thinking, and who we're seeing. We are all sliding up the adoption curve to a future where this behaviour will only become even more extensive, more normal. How did our perception of what is an appropriate public identity shift so far, so quickly?

Concern over the dilution of our privacy came to a head in the last week with a sizable faction of Facebook's users rebelling against users' profiles being made publicly accessible by default. Their action may just have pushed Facebook into simplifying its bewildering 150-option privacy settings. Google, meanwhile, confessed that some remarkably lax code-pasting led to its Street View cameras accidentally recording personal data from domestic WiFi networks.

Both have rightly prompted outrage and an interrogation of the state of our digital privacy and are being scrutinised by regulators. But Facebook and Google are fashionable and intriguing targets for sensational headlines. In truth, most Facebook data is meaningless and conversational while most of us are still listed by our home address in BT's online phone book.

Assuming none of us this side of the digital divide are willing to disenfranchise ourselves socially and professionally by giving up the internet altogether, we have to be prepared to give up something. The free lunch is over; we pay with money, time or behavioural data. There is a benefit, too, because sharing information about ourselves opens the door to the semantic web; the powerful, personalised internet of the future.

Already, from your internet connection to the sites you use, everything you share, search, comment, email, read and watch every social signal you make is recorded. The only rule you need to protect yourself online is to commit something to the web only if you would be happy for anyone to read it.

The internet is indelible. I put a lot online, but I filter. I don't post my home address or about my childminder. Eric Schmidt, Google's chief executive, reminded us this week that much of the five exabytes of digital information the world generates every two days equivalent to 100,000 years of DVD-quality video is created by our social signals.

If you want to experiment and, like me, understand what's possible, you could try Blippy, a Twitter-like service that records every purchase you make and shares it with friends. If you want to take control, try Garlik or ReclaimPrivacy.org. For startups, there's opportunity at every turn.

Mark Zuckerberg, the fresh-faced Facebook founder, has a demanding audience he needs to impress, and increasingly expectant investors who want to see a return on those 500 million users. Facebook, in particular, is constantly pushing and testing the boundaries of what its users will accept as public information. It has normalised much of the information-sharing we were once uncomfortable with, and will continue to act as an agent for change.

In Google's case, it is tempting to characterise this uniquely influential company as a vast corporate machine with $25bn in the bank, questionable ethics and a world-dominating agenda, quite possibly operating from a hollowed-out volcano somewhere near Mountain View.

The truth is far less dramatic. Neither company has a malevolent agenda, but both operate in the fast-moving, demanding bubble of Silicon Valley, with the world's smartest engineers and both appear at times almost naive to the implications of the technology that they wield.

Google famously wants to index the world's information and, with 65% of the world's search market, is better placed than anyone to help us find and manage what we put online. In the past it has provided advice and created centralised profiles to give users more control, but this all needs to be much more comprehensive and conspicuous.

It is beholden on both these companies to educate, inform and empower their users to take control of their digital footprint. The web will only keep developing and keep challenging us in this way. This is not just a phase we are going through. All these issues are only going to intensify, and as they say on Facebook: it's complicated.

Filmmaker Joel David Moore is a Mac man and an iPhone addict but is desperate for a spell-check

What's your favourite piece of technology, and how has it improved your life?
Unfortunately, I'm going to have to say the iPhone. It's the most used piece of machinery I own. But it's a love-hate relationship with the typing if I didn't go back every three words to fix a typing error, it would look like an alien language. And not a good one, it would be an alien race that never left the planet and still hadn't figured out fire.

When was the last time you used it, and what for?
I'm using it to answer these questions. But not without switching over every couple questions and playing a tower defense game. geoDefense is what I'm addicted to now. It's like thumb crack.

What additional features would you add if you could?
Well, a physical slide-out keyboard, but that'll never happen so I'd settle with I know this sounds crazy, but SPELL-CHECK!!! It's ridiculous without it. It's like if when they brought out the mouse, when dragging it around it went whatever direction it chose to go.

Do you think it will be obsolete in 10 years' time?
No. Unfortunately I will be obsolete before it will.

What always frustrates you about technology in general?
That it's business. I get it. But it sucks. They have to let it out slowly, so we don't get all the goodies all at once. They make us buy 17 new models before, let's say, "cut and paste". You can see a theme here, right?

If you had one tip about getting the best out of new technology, what would it be?
Wait until the second generation. Play with someone else's until the new one comes out. Warning: this idea can't be used with sex toys.

Do you consider yourself to be a luddite or a nerd?
Yes. But I mask it well staying unshaved, which they make me lose for any role I play so I look more like a nerd. It's a tough cycle.

What's the most expensive piece of technology you've ever owned?
I don't go crazy buying expensive technology. I'd probably say my laptops and TVs are the most expensive things I've bought. Although I once got a gold-plated Nokia phone from a gifting suite one time. It may have been worth a lot but I sold it cheap on eBay. If someone bought it let me know if it works tweet me @joeldavidmoore.

Mac or PC, and why?
As you've guessed by now, Mac. But I've always used Mac my family had Macs growing up. On a PC I'm like a monkey trying to hump a football.

Do you still buy physical media such as CDs and DVDs, or do you download? What was your last purchase?
Download. I haven't bought a CD since Milli Vanilli. And then Charles Shaw and John Leland, the actual singers.

Robot butlers a good idea or not?
Great idea, if they will respond to verbal abuse and can know how to stave off lonely late-night advances.

What piece of technology would you most like to own?
The clapper.

Joel David Moore's new film, Spiral which he stars in, as well as co-writing and co-directing is out on DVD on Monday

A new data point about the state of YouTube, which has a fondness for using anniversaries to release them. On the eve of its fifth birthday, the site says in a celebratory blog post that it is now getting more than two billion views a day. That's up from the one billion-plus daily views YouTube said it was getting back in October, when it was marking three years in Google's fold.

No mention among the cheering, of course, of the $1 billion Viacom lawsuit, which has led to some less than pretty revelations about how the site may have attained some of its early growth - or whether YouTube is actually profitable yet. Some analysts have said however that YouTube could start contributing to Google's bottom line this year.

Nikon's new Coolpix digital camera looks smart and is easy to use, but it produces mixed results

Nikon's new Coolpix S3000 is a lovely little camera, very easy to use, and reasonably priced at 109.99 or less. I liked it a lot, until it came to viewing the pictures. The results were mixed, but disappointing compared with the two Nikon digital cameras I actually own an older, bulkier Coolpix 5600 and a D40 DSLR.

The Coolpix S3000 follows the style established by Canon's Digital Ixus line, the Pentax Optio, and earlier Nikons such as the Coolpix S220. In other words, it's thin and flat when you carry it around, but the lens comes out when you turn it on.

The S3000 looks just last year's S220, but provides a moderate advance in specification. You get a 4x optical zoom instead of a 3x zoom, a 2.7in LCD screen instead of 2.5in, and 12 megapixels instead of 10. Both cameras include Nikon's Smart Portrait software. This offers face-priority focusing, will take the shot when the subject smiles, and is "blink proof" it takes two images and automatically saves the one with the eyes open. It also has a bright focusing light on the front and, unlike many small cameras, doesn't seem to produce a "red eye" effect with flash.

The zoom covers 27mm to 108mm, in terms equivalent to a 35mm camera, so you get a usable wide-angle. However, I found it almost impossible to frame pictures precisely. You can push a little lever to make the motorised lens zoom in or out, but you can't make it stop where you want it.

I also missed having an optical viewfinder. Using the LCD in sunlight, it can be hard to see exactly what's in the frame, and you can't keep the camera still by holding it against your face. I wasn't happy with the sharpness of some pictures either because the focusing wasn't quite right (sometimes it was a long way off), or I moved the camera slightly (despite the built-in "electronic vibration reduction"), or the sensor/software combination didn't resolve enough detail. (The S3000's 1/2.3 sensor is small 11mm in diameter but respectable by compact camera standards.)

It didn't help that the S3000 tended to overexpose, leading to a loss of highlight detail and a corresponding lack of colour saturation. But flash shots showed the lens was capable of producing sharp pictures, and pictures taken in slightly overcast conditions showed good colour.

To be fair, it's very easy to use exposure compensation on this camera, and you can set an option for Vivid Color instead of Standard Color. But it's a point-and-shoot camera, and I suspect few users will experiment with the menu options, even if they know what's where.

The S3000 comes with a small removable lithium-ion battery, which is charged inside the camera via a USB cable that fits into a mains plug (supplied) or into a computer. Nikon reckons a charge should provide about 220 shots. If you want to recharge a battery outside the camera, you can buy a separate MH-63 charger.

The price does not include a slipcase or an SD card for photos, but the S3000 has enough internal memory for about a dozen photos at the maximum resolution of 4,000 x 3,000 pixels. These 12MP photos typically take up 2.5-3.0MB each, which is twice as much as snaps taken with my 6MP (3,000 x 2,000 pixels) Nikon D40, but in this case, bigger isn't better.

Pros: Well made; very easy to use; 4x glass lens starts at 27mm wide-angle; good results with flash; available in different colours; reasonably priced.

Cons: Picture quality can be disappointing; no optical viewfinder; no fine control over zooming; SD card costs extra.

Nikon.com

Hard data

CCD sensor size: 1/2.3in (6.16 x 4.62mm; 0.28cm )

Effective pixels: 12m Pixel density: 42MP/cm

Maximum resolution: 4000 x 3000 pixels

Lower resolution options: 3968 x 2232 (16:9 widescreen), 3264 x 2448, 2592 x 1944, 2048 x 1536, 1024 x 768, 640 x 480 Movie formats: 640 x 480, 320 x 240 ISO range: 80-1600 (auto); 80-3200 (manual)

Accessories included: USB/charging cable with mains plug; audio-video cable; software on CD-Rom Dimensions: 94 x 56 x 19 mm (3.8 x 2.2 x 0.8 inches)

Weight (with battery): 116g (4.1 oz)

Popular peer-to-peer platform found liable for infringing copyright of America's four major labels

US record labels have claimed another victory in their war against filesharing, winning a major court case against LimeWire. On Tuesday, a federal court ruled against the popular peer-to-peer platform, finding LimeWire's owners personally liable for copyright infringement.

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), which represents the four major US labels, brought the case against LimeWire in August 2006. Almost four years later, the service is still perhaps the most popular software for exchanging files allowing users to search each other's music libraries for songs they would like to share. According to CNET, LimeWire has been downloaded more than 200m times including 340,000 downloads last week. A survey by the NDP Group found that LimeWire was used by 58% of people who have downloaded music from a peer-to-peer network in the last year.

Like Napster (and AIMster and Grokster) before them, LimeWire's owners denied they were responsible for the legality of files shared by their users. Unlike Napster, LimeWire does not host any shared files on their own servers the material is distributed among users. But Judge Kimba Wood was not convinced by the argument. "The evidence demonstrates that [LimeWire] optimised [their] features to ensure that users [could] download digital recordings, the majority of which are protected by copyright," she said.. "[Lime Wire] assisted users in committing infringement."

In a summary judgment, Wood ruled that LimeWire founder Mark Gorton, as well as parent company Lime Group, had committed copyright infringement, engaged in unfair competition, and induced copyright infringement. By finding Gorton personally responsible, Wood's decision will be particularly terrifying to other "edge case" entrepreneurs. In other words, Facebook's owners had better make sure people don't start uploading illegal MP3s.

The court has not yet determined the issue of monetary damages, though the RIAA has claimed they are owed up to $150,000 for every infringing work. With millions of files in question, that number could become huge. "[LimeWire] thumbed its nose at the law and creators," the RIAA's chairman said. Labels will now likely move for an injunction against LimeWire, forcing the service to go offline.

According to George Searle, chief executive of LimeWire, the company "remains committed to developing innovative products and services for the end-user and to working with the entire music industry, including the major labels, to achieve this mission".

Next attack could come down fibre optic cable, warn experts
Russia seen as potential partner in missile defence against Iran

The world's most powerful military alliance is increasingly vulnerable to attack by unconventional weapons and cyberwarfare in particular, Nato governments were warned today.

"The next significant attack on the alliance may well come down a fibre optic cable", according to a draft new Nato "strategic concept". There are unacceptable "serious gaps" in Nato's cyber defences, it warns.

The warnings are contained in a report by a group of high-level experts chaired by Madeleine Albright, the former US secretary of state. They will provide the basis for an agreement due to be signed by Nato leaders at a summit in Lisbon in November.

Senior Nato military officials and diplomats say they are concerned about the lack of co-ordinated planning against cyber attacks. They are wrestling with the prospect of member states asking for help under article five of the Nato treaty, originally designed to provide mutual assistance to an ally faced with a conventional military attack.

Asked whether a cyber attack or the cutting off of energy supplies also cited in the report would in future be considered a military attack, the paper dodges the issue by stating that whether Nato's article five would be triggered would depend on "the nature, source, scope, and other aspects of the particular security challenge". Article five was invoked for the first, and so far only, time after the September 2001 attacks on the US. Three years ago, Estonia appealed to its Nato and EU partners for help against cyber attacks it linked to Russia.

"Already, cyber attacks against Nato systems occur frequently, but most often below the threshold of political concern," says the Albright report. "However, the risk of a large-scale attack on Nato's command and control systems or energy grids could readily warrant consultations ... and could possibly lead to collective defence measures under article 5."

Effective cyber defence, it continues, "requires the means to prevent, detect, respond to, and recover from attacks".

The most probable threats to Nato allies in the coming decade were unconventional, more volatile, and less predictable, according to the report. Three stand out, it says an attack by ballistic missiles from a rogue state, strikes by international terrorist groups, and cyber assaults of varying degrees of severity.

Other threats that pose a risk include disruptions to energy and maritime supply lines, the harmful consequences of global climate change, and financial crisis.

The report also recommended that Nato's new strategic concept should endorse "constructive re-engagement" with Russia, which should be embraced as a potential partner in a missile defence system directed principally at Iran. Nato must also win the war in Afghanistan and assure the security of its 28 members.

The report distances itself from some countries, notably those from eastern Europe, which enthusiastically backed Nato membership for Ukraine and Georgia, a prospect strongly opposed by Russia. Although the report reiterates Nato's "open door" policy, it says only that the allies "should make regular use of the Nato-Ukraine and Nato-Georgia commissions to discuss mutual security concerns and to foster practical co-operation".

It also states that "as long as nuclear weapons remain a reality in international relations, the alliance should retain a nuclear component to its deterrent strategy at the minimum level required by the prevailing security environment".

In a reference to US tactical nuclear weapons based in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey, it says: "Under current security conditions, the retention of some US forward-deployed systems on European soil reinforces the principle of extended nuclear deterrence and collective defence."

Oracle chief Larry Ellison says he is already turning around Sun, but can a software maker figure out the hardware world?

In the movie Iron Man 2, Larry Ellison makes a cameo appearance as a billionaire, playboy software magnate. It is a role he knows well. He is playing himself chief executive of Oracle, one of Silicon Valley's most enduring, successful and flamboyant figures.

At the age of 65, he is undertaking one of the biggest challenges of his career, and it's not playing Hamlet on Broadway. Oracle, the company Ellison founded three decades ago and built into dominant force in the software industry, is making a go at hardware with the acquisition of money-losing Sun Microsystems.

This is not entirely unlike MIT deciding to field a competitive football team, but Ellison being Ellison, he could not be less worried. "We have a wealth of technology to package into systems," said Ellison, who won the America's Cup in February. "I see no reason why we can't get this to where Sun under Oracle should be larger than Sun ever was."

In a rare interview he discussed his turnaround efforts at Sun so far, revealed plans to buy additional hardware companies and detailed new products that will launch in the near future. And he did so with his usual in-your-face style heaping all manner of abuse, for example, on Sun's previous managers.

During the 1990s, Sun prospered by selling high-end computers at top dollar to large corporations and dotcom startups. Its business peaked in 2001, then slid with the collapse of the internet boom and never recovered, though the company is still widely respected for its technological prowess and the brain power of its engineering staff.

Sun came into play in November 2008 after IBM chief executive Sam Palmisano made an overture to buy it. Oracle, which had been strictly a software maker, unexpectedly jumped in to outbid IBM by just 10c a share, paying a total of $5.6bn ( 3.8bn)in cash.

Now Ellison says he is going to rebuild Sun's hardware business by using a strategy that helped IBM prosper in the 1960s selling computer systems built with standardised bundles of hardware and software.

Plenty of skeptics doubt Ellison can pull it off. Sun lost $2.2bn in its last fiscal year as an independent company. Conventional wisdom holds that he will end up divesting the company's hardware business.

Ellison has a pretty good track record when it comes to predicting where the industry is headed. Besides innovating the wildly lucrative relational database that bears Oracle's name, Ellison was quicker than most in creating software that works with both internet technology and the widely used Linux operating system.

He also started buying up smaller software makers in 2003 when critics said his consolidation strategy was doomed to fail. It hasn't. "People have lost a lot of money second guessing Larry about IT strategy," said Dave Roux, co-founder of Silver Lake, the world's biggest private equity firm focused on technology, in which Ellison was an original investor.

"He's a very thoughtful and reasoned observer of the big tectonic forces that kind of go rippling through the industry," said Roux, who worked for Oracle before setting up Silver Lake.

Ellison has maintained his status as the leader of a powerhouse in the topsy-turvy, protean technology world. IBM, which pioneered business computers, nearly collapsed in the 1990s, but then recovered as it aggressively expanded in services and software. Ellison's close friend Steve Jobs was forced out of Apple, only to return a decade later to resurrect his company with the iPod. Meanwhile, Google has replaced Microsoft as the "ubertech company" and occasional villain.

Although his products are used by businesses only and not nearly as recognisable as Apple's Macs or Google's search engine, they've made Ellison the world's sixth-richest man, worth an estimated $28bn, according to Forbes. Oracle counts the bulk of the world's major corporations as customers, and the company's market value now tops that of Hewlett-Packard, the world's top maker of personal computers.

Ellison says he has already stopped the carnage at Sun, less than four months after the sale closed in January.

"Their management made some very bad decisions that damaged their business and allowed us to buy them for a bargain price," he told Reuters. He added that he expects profit from Sun's operations to boost Oracle's earnings in the current quarter, which ends May 31.

The integration has proceeded swiftly, says Ellison, because a protracted antitrust review in Europe gave Oracle time to draw up an exhaustive plan for resuscitating Sun. In typical Ellison fashion, he took a hands-on approach to the integration, choosing to meet directly with technical managers at Sun as often as four days a week to diagnose its problems, rather than delegating the work to underlings.

Mark Barrenechea, a former Oracle executive who used to sit in on weekly engineering meetings with Ellison and is now CEO of specialty computer maker Silicon Graphics, says this is what Ellison does best.

"He doesn't write the code. He doesn't solder resisters onto motherboards. But he understands how all the pieces fit together and how he wants the building to look," Barrenechea said.

Machine with flashing eyes and plastic pigtails presides over wedding of Kokoro employee and robotics professor

Almost everyone stood when the bride walked down the aisle in her white gown, but not the wedding conductor, because she was bolted to her chair.

The nuptials at this ceremony were led by I-Fairy, a 4ft seated robot with flashing eyes and plastic pigtails. The wedding today was the first to be led by a robot, according to the manufacturer, Kokoro.

"Please lift the bride's veil," the robot said in a tinny voice, waving its arms in the air as the newlyweds kissed in front of about 50 guests.

The ceremony took place at a restaurant in Hibiya Park, central Tokyo. The I-Fairy wore a wreath of flowers, and wires led out from beneath it to a black curtain nearby where a man crouched and clicked commands into a computer.

Japan has one of the most advanced robotics industries in the world, with the government actively supporting the field for future growth. Industrial models in factories are now standard, and recently companies have been making a push to inject robots into everyday life.

Honda, the car manufacturer involved in artificial intelligence research, already makes a walking child-shaped robot, and other firms have developed them to entertain the elderly or play baseball.

Kokoro, whose corporate goal is to "touch the hearts of the people", makes giant dinosaur robots for exhibitions and lifelike android models that can smile and laugh.

The company is a subsidiary of Sanrio, the 50-year-old "small gift, big smile" company, which owns the rights to Hello Kitty and other Japanese characters.

Today's bride, Satoko Inoue, 36, who works at Kokoro, said: "This was a lot of fun. I think that Japanese have a strong sense that robots are our friends. Those in the robot industry mostly understand this, but people mainly want robots near them that serve some purpose."

Her new husband, Tomohiro Shibata, a 42-year-old professor of robotics at the Nara Institute of Science and Technology in central Japan, said: "It would be nice if the robot was a bit more clever, but she is very good at expressing herself."

The I-Fairy sells for about 6.3 million yen ( 46,000), and three are in use in Singapore, the US and Japan, according to a company spokeswoman, Kayako Kido.

The robot has 18 degrees of motion in its arms, and mainly repeats preprogrammed movements and sounds.

Facebook and Zynga, the company behind Farmville, have settled their dispute over game credits and entered into a five-year strategic relationship

Facebook and Zynga, the company behind games such as Farmville, have buried the hatchet, announcing a five-year strategic relationship and "shared commitment to social gaming".

The two companies have been at loggerheads over Facebook's attempt to make its virtual currency, Facebook Credits, the only one players of games made by Zynga and others can use.

Farmville, the hugely popular game where players cultivate their own farm, is free but players can buy virtual currency with real money to boost their plot.

Facebook takes a 30% commission every time its currency is used, leading Zynga which reportedly makes as much as $100m ( 70m) a year from selling virtual items such as barns to threaten to quit the social networking website.

The two companies, which did not reveal the details of the deal, said that the agreement "provides a solid foundation for both companies to continue to work together to provide millions of people with a compelling user experience for social games".

Zynga has more than 230 million users of its games and spends a huge amount as an advertiser on Facebook. The New York Post estimates that Zynga could account for 10% to 20% of Facebook's revenue, while the social networking website's 400 million-plus global users have been a huge part of why games like Farmville have taken off.

"Facebook was a pioneer in opening their platform in 2007 and in just three years tens of millions of Facebook users play our games everyday, from FarmVille and Cafe World to Treasure Isle and Mafia Wars," said Mark Pincus, founder and chief executive at Zynga.

"We are excited about Facebook's long-term commitment to social gaming and Zynga, and look forward to working with them and other platform providers to bring the best social gaming experience to users worldwide," Pincus added.

Zynga, which also has its games on websites including MySpace, MSN and Yahoo, is "testing" Facebook Credits in selected games. The company said it would expand the use of the virtual currency to more titles "in the coming months".

Film studios' injunction granted by German court means that BitTorrent site has no internet connection (updated)

The Pirate Bay has (briefly) vanished beneath the internet waves again, after several Hollywood film studios won an injunction against its bandwidth provider CB3ROB via a court in Hamburg.

Update: the site is back up, though it's not clear who the carrier is: traceroute doesn't resolve, and there's nothing in the name servers to indicate who's hosting it - probably for good, injunction-related reasons.

The injunction (which Torrentfreak says was granted without an oral hearing) prohibited CB3ROB from "connecting The Pirate Bay website and its servers to the internet".

A Pirate Bay source told TorrentFreak that it is already working on a backup solution to bring the site online; the servers themselves haven't been touched (or moved) rom their well-guarded - and highly secret - location; they simply need to be routed through another provider.

That will be hard on both Pirate Bay and CB3ROB - the latter being sympathetic to the Pirate Bay's position on copyright, backing the Pirate Party in the Netherlands (here's a translation of CB3ROB's page on the Pirate Party manifesto).

The Pirate Bay's four co-founders were sentenced to a year in jail and a $3.6m fine in April 2009 after being found guilty of assisting the distribution of illegal content online. Charges against the site, which allows web users to access music, movies and TV shows without paying for them and claimed 22 million users during February, were brought by a consortium of media, film and music companies led by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry.

A Stockholm court found the four defendants guilty of making 33 specific files accessible for illegal sharing through The Pirate Bay, which means they will have to pay compensation to 17 different music and media companies including Sony BMG, Universal, EMI, Warner, MGM and 20th Century Fox. It is not known whether the reparations have yet been paid.

A Whois search on thepiratebay.org presently shows that it has no connection - the name servers (which provide the lookup for the domain) point recursively to thepiratebay.org, while the traceroute (to the address 194.71.107.15 - assigned to The Pirate Bay) fails at Level 3 hosting.

This is surely not the end of The Pirate Bay - but it may be forced to increasingly desperate measures to keep the site online as film companies keep pursuing it to new territories.

[Update: A note to commenters: the music and film industries ceased saying some time ago that there is a 1:1 correlation between illicit downloads and 'lost' sales. They use what's called a "substitution factor" which suggests 1 lost sale per 10 downloads. Arguably, that's high - you could argue it should be more like 1 per 100 - but please don't misattribute such things when there are published reports just a web search away.]

Apple appears to have run out of its stock of iPads for British customers, even though it will not start shipping the device this side of the Atlantic for two weeks.

The Californian company said just over a week ago that the iPad would go on sale on May 28 in the UK starting at 429 for the basic version with the top of the range 64GB device with both Wi-Fi and 3G network access costing 699. It opened up pre-orders on May 10.

But eager iPad owners visiting its website over the weekend were being warned that if they ordered an iPad now it would ship "by June 7th".

The delay is believed to have been caused by Apple running out of its initial supply of devices in just three days, with pre-orders being far higher than the company originally forecast.

Market research firm GfK NOP, whose pronouncements about the retail sector are well regarded, estimates that Apple will sell more than 2m iPads in the UK. It has carried out research that suggests around 5% of British consumers intend to buy an iPad.

Those gadgets fans who had registered for an iPad by the middle of last week are expected to receive their device on May 28, but anyone who has bought it more recently is likely to face an increasingly lengthy wait.

Apple has already delayed the launch of the iPad in the UK once, blaming "surprisingly strong" demand in the US, where it sold more than a million in the first month.

The device is already a faster seller than the iPhone in the US. It took 74 days for Apple to shift a million of its first mobile phone. It sailed past that milestone with the iPad in just 28 days.

There is also concern that shipments of the iPad could be further delayed if the cloud of ash spewing from the Eyjafjallajokull volcano in Iceland causes further disruption to international flights.

Find out his attitudes to porn, and what he thinks Bob Dylan would think of Apple, the company, if he were 20 now

Steve Jobs on the cover of Time. Getting an interview with him turns out to be easier via email. Photo by kevinspencer on Flickr. Some rights reserved

Want to know Steve Jobs's thoughts on the role of the iPad, Flash, porn (yes, that word), and what Bob Dylan would think of Apple, the company, today?

Look no further than Ryan Tate's email back-and-forth with him - which shows that the chief of Apple is, if nothing else, not unwilling to indulge in some email sparring with completely random strangers. Though Ryan Tate of Gawker (for it was he) is more than just random; he's also employed by Gawker Media, which owns Gizmodo, which Apple doesn't like because.. oh, just read about it.

"If [Bob] Dylan was 20 today, how would he feel about your company? Would he think the iPad had the faintest thing to do with 'revolution'? Revolutions are about freedom", Tate wrote after seeing an iPad advert.

Three hours later, Jobs replied: "Yep, freedom from programs that steal your private data. [We think he means viruses and malware.] Freedom from programs that trash your battery. [We think he means Adobe's Fl*sh.] Freedom from porn. [We think he means.. er, porn.] Yep, freedom. The times they are a changin' [for younger readers: this is a Bob Dylan reference; Dylan is one of Jobs's favourite musicians], and some traditional PC folks feel like their world is slipping away. It is."

There follow an argument about Flash, batteries, Objective-C, porn ("you might care more [about not having it] when you have kids", remarks Jobs), whether Apple has a private police force that kicked in a Gawker person's doors ("You are so misinformed," Jobs retorts. "No one kicked in any doors. You're believing a lot of erroneous blogger reports").

Jobs concludes: "Microsoft had (has) every right to enforce whatever rules for their platform that they want. If people don't like it, they can write for another platform, which some did. Or they can buy another platform, which some did.

"As for us, we're just doing what we can to try and make (and preserve) the user experience we envision. You can disagree with us, but our motives are pure."

And then a final, very Jobs-ish little parting shot:

"By the way, what have you done that's so great? Do you create anything, or just criticize others [sic] work and belittle their motivations?"

An interesting question which we'll leave hanging. But truly, the tendency of Jobs to reply to emails from all over the place show that he's taking an intriguing approach to that chief executive/customer interaction stuff. Plus the not-sleeping thing - most of the emails were sent after midnight California time.

Hell, next you know he'll be turning up on Twitter. (Meanwhile there are plenty of blogs devoted to recording his email replies; this Tumblr one seems one of the best.

Meanwhile, if you want to email Jobs, his email is hardly a secret. (Finding it is your initiative test.) If you get an answer, do share. But think of a useful question first..

'I pulled off into an unknown backstreet and drove in that urban style first pioneered by Jack Regan in The Sweeney'

How do you test a car? One way, obviously, is to put on a helmet and take it round a racetrack at maximum speed. On the whole, I tend to avoid this approach, partly because I don't possess a helmet, and partly because I don't have access to a racetrack. So my compromise position is just to drive it as I would my own car.

Yet every now and then fate places us in situations that provide a far more severe test than any circuit could offer. Such were the circumstances on one of the first sunny days of spring this year. I had to get to the funeral of an old friend, Elspeth, on the East Sussex coast. She was a stickler for good taste, was Els, not least in cars, so I don't know what she would have made of the brightly coloured Mazda 3 Sport that I set out in.

Come to that, before the journey, I wasn't quite sure what I made of it, either. With all its various tapers and indents, it looked a bit like one of those hatchbacks that someone with too much time on their hands had customised in their backyard.

And judging by the alarmed expression of another friend, who we picked up on the way, it clearly wasn't the most appropriate vehicle for the occasion. Still, at least it would get us there.

Or so I thought. In my anxiety, I had forgotten about south London, that vast traffic jam masquerading as half a city. After sitting stationary on the Old Kent Road for 30 minutes, I realised that radical action was called for. The nifty little satnav was telling us that we were due to be 15 minutes late, so I pulled off into an unknown backstreet and drove in that urban style first pioneered by Jack Regan in The Sweeney. It was like slipping through a wormhole. For all I knew, I could have emerged in Romford. But miraculously we found ourselves, sometime later, on the M20 conducting a close study of the location of speed cameras.

The Mazda 3 proved itself commendably adept at negotiating this section of the trip. But according to the satnav, we were still going to arrive eight minutes after the ceremony had begun. We were now in an episode of 24, with the clock counting out impending disaster.

Next came the traffic-laden single carriageway to the coast. The Mazda 3 doesn't boast the most powerful acceleration, but it had enough to overtake when it mattered, which was practically all the time.

We eventually drew up with 10 seconds to spare. It wasn't ideal preparation for the draining emotions to come, but I think Els would have been amused by the drama. The Mazda 3: it will get you to the church on time.

Mazda 3 Sport

Price 20,380
Top speed 132mph
Acceleration 0-62mph in 8.2 seconds
Average consumption 50.4mpg
CO2 emissions 149g/km
Eco rating 6/10
Bound for The brink
In a word Lively

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange had his passport confiscated when he returned to his native Australia last week, according to The Age.

Arriving at Melbourne, immigration staff told Assange his passport was looking worn and would be cancelled. Thirty minutes after his passport was returned to him, a police officer then searched his bags and questioned him about his computer hacking offences he committed in 1991 when he was a teenager.


Julian Assange, left, speaking at the 26th Chaos Communication Congress in January this year. Photo by andygee1 on Flickr. Some rights reserved

Despite the search, Assange was then told his passport is still classified as 'normal' on the immigration database and could therefore travel freely.

Speaking on Australia's Dateline show, Assange said he is wary of travelling in Australia, where he was born, because of information that has been published on Wikileaks.

Assange had been told that the publication of a proposed blacklist of banned sites has been referred to the Australian Federal Police, who were investigating how it was leaked and then published on Wikileaks, though AFP told the Sydney Morning Herald yesterday that the case had been dropped.

Looking at the site, it's hard to believe there are many countries where travel is not a problem. Some light reading from the front page:

CIA report into shoring up Afghan war support in Western Europe
US Intelligence planned to destroy WikiLeaks
Cryptome.org takedown: Microsoft Global Criminal Compliance Handbook

Ofcom report reveals users of sites such as Facebook have become more savvy about online security and are reluctant to reveal details online

UK internet users have become significantly more cautious about how much personal information they reveal on social networking websites such as Facebook, according to a report by media regulator Ofcom.

The twice-yearly report, a survey of the internet habits of 1,824 people aged 16 and over, found that since 2007 users have become more savvy about online security and are now more reluctant to provide personal information online.

Ofcom's report found that 80% of those surveyed who have a social networking website are likely to only allow friends or family to see it. This is a significant seachange in attitude compared to 2007 when just 48% of those surveyed took such steps.

The report has been published in a climate where the practices of social networking sites Facebook in particular have come under scrutiny for privacy and security practices. Earlier this month, EU data protection officials called Facebook's latest privacy changes "unaceptable" and the world's biggest social networking site has been embroiled in a controversy over "panic buttons" for child users.

Almost half of adult internet users in Scotland say they have set up a social networking profile compared with 46% in Wales, 44% in England and 31% in Northern Ireland.

However, about a quarter of internet users say they "lack confidence" in installing filtering software or security features.

The report found that the Scottish were the least likely to worry about entering personal details online with 50% "happy" to enter their home address details on the internet, compared with 23% in Wales and Northern Ireland. More than 40% of Scottish adult internet users are also happy to enter credit card details.

When it comes to trust in media, just 31% of internet users believe web content to be "reliable and accurate". This compares to about 50% of adults that trust television and radio content. However, news sites are trusted by 58% of web users.

Adults in Scotland say they use the internet at home the most at 10.6 hours per week, with adults in England at 8.3 hours per week and those in Wales at 6.8 hours per week. Adults in Northern Ireland say they use the internet at home the least at 6.5 hours per week.

Social networking sites being used to flout rules leading to 'intrusive and unplanned' contact

The natural parents of adopted children are increasingly using Facebook and other social networking sites to track down their offspring, flouting the usual controls and safeguards.

Adoption agencies are reporting huge numbers of calls from "deeply distressed" adoptive parents whose children have been contacted out of the blue.

Jonathan Pearce, chief executive of Adoption UK, said it was having to deal with the consequences of this "intrusive and unplanned communication", and warned that it was becoming more difficult to guarantee confidentiality to adoptive parents and their children.

At the moment, official contact in adoption is most often made through the "letterbox" process. The adoptive parents send the birth family a letter and photos every year via a social worker or adoption agency intermediary. If the birth parent wants to respond, they also have to go through this route.

However, Facebook and other social networking sites have changed all this. Any scrap of information a name, location or date of birth can help biological parents track down their children.

But the agencies warn that the existing rules protect often extremely vulnerable children. Where once adoption tended to involve a young, single woman giving up her unplanned baby, now two-thirds of adopted children have been removed because their parents abused or neglected them. In many cases, the birth parents dispute the removal, blaming social services. One message sent to a child given up some years ago for adoption read: "Hello, I'm your birth father. I have been searching for you ever since you were stolen by social services. You look beautiful. I love you so much."

Another read: "Darling son, I am so happy because I have found you here. I have been looking for ages. Please write back because you've been told lies about me." Many local authorities are now advising adoptive parents not to include photographs in their annual letters, in case these are posted online in an attempt to trace the child.

In a report to be broadcast on Channel 4 News tonight, one adoptive mother said a message to her daughter from the biological mother had had a catastrophic impact on the family. The adoptive mother, who cannot be identified, said: "Our daughter, who is our prime concern, has gone from no contact from her birth family, at the hands of whom she had a difficult start in life, to suddenly finding they are there at the press of a button."

Her daughter had just turned 16 when she received the message in February. She is due to sit her GCSEs shortly, but her adoptive mother said she had gone through a whole range of emotions and that it had "completely thrown her".

The natural mother failed to acknowledge why her daughter had been removed from the family at the age of seven. "She was subjected to abuse and neglect over a long period of time," said her adoptive mother. "But none of that is being acknowledged now."

In another case, a teenage girl was contacted by her biological mother who, in turn, put her in touch with her birth father. The girl was unaware that the man had sexually abused her when she was a young child. The report also cites the case of the adoptive father of one teenage boy who went to meet his birth father after contact was made through Facebook. The boy had been removed from his family because of severe physical abuse when he was a baby.

There are no reliable estimates of how many children have been contacted using social networking sites. But agencies are so concerned that next month the British Association for Adoption and Fostering is to send out new guidance to social workers and adoptive parents.

Dr John Simmonds, the BAAF's director of policy, research and development, said the guidelines recognise that Facebook and other social networking sites are here to stay. "We will have to build them into the fabric of our adoption practice and re-emphasise the importance of children knowing why they were placed for adoption and the circumstances of the birth parents," Dr Simmonds said. "There is nothing we can say to the social networking sites."

Chris Smith, whose children were adopted seven years ago, said he uses social networking sites to "follow them through life", although he has not sent any messages. Smith, who believes his children were unfairly adopted, said he wanted to know about their wellbeing. The annual letter does not tell you about their health or interests, he said.

"Because I know where they are, I can just sit and see some of the photos of their school and of events and know they are doing OK," he explained.

Some agencies now ask birth parents to sign contracts prohibiting them from using social networking sites to make contact. The adoptive mother to whom the Observer spoke said that when she contacted social services for advice they told her to stop their daughter from using social networking sites. "I told them that I did not believe I could do that because she would run away. I can cut back some contact, but not all," she said.

Normally the girl would not have been able to meet her biological family until she was 18. Because of the unexpected contact, her adoptive family is being forced to explore the option of a formal meeting with the birth parents. The mother said this was "far from ideal", but the "genie was out of the bottle".

Facebook is expected to introduce changes to its privacy settings as early as this week following attacks by regulators and campaign groups, who claim it has failed to ensure users' privacy.

Those briefed at Facebook's headquarters in the US say the company is to introduce a "master control" that would simplify users' privacy settings. Users would then be able to choose which groups of people they wished to share information with everyone, friends of friends or just friends. This would replace the current automatic system that shares users' information with third parties and has been criticised for being over-complicated and confusing.

For the full report see Channel 4 News tonight at 6.30pm

Pentagon creates specialist online unit to counter cyber attack amid growing fears of militarisation of the internet

The US military has appointed its first senior general to direct cyber warfare despite fears that the move marks another stage in the militarisation of cyberspace.

The newly promoted four-star general, Keith Alexander, takes charge of the Pentagon's ambitious and controversial new Cyber Command, designed to conduct virtual combat across the world's computer networks. He was appointed on Friday afternoon in a low-key ceremony at Fort Meade, in Maryland.

The creation of America's most senior cyber warrior comes just days after the US air force disclosed that some 30,000 of its troops had been re-assigned from technical support "to the frontlines of cyber warfare".

The creation of Cyber Command is in response to increasing anxiety over the vulnerability of the US's military and other networks to a cyber attack.

James Miller, the deputy under-secretary of defence for policy, has hinted that the US might consider a conventional military response to certain kinds of online attack.

Although Alexander pledged during his confirmation hearings before the Senate committee on armed services last month that Cyber Command would not contribute to the militarisation of cyberspace, the committee's chairman, Senator Carl Levin expressed concern that both Pentagon doctrine, and the legal framework for online operations, had failed to keep pace with rapid advances in cyber warfare.

In particular Levin voiced concern that US cyber operations to combat online threats to the US, routed through neutral third countries, "could have broad and damaging consequences" to wider American interests.

Plans for Cyber Command were originally conceived under President George W Bush. Since taking office Barack Obama has embraced the theme of cyber security, describing it last year as "one of the most serious economic and national security challenges [the US faces] as a nation".

During his confirmation hearing, Alexander said that the Pentagon's networks were being targeted by "hundreds of thousands of probes every day" adding that he had "been alarmed by the increase, especially in this year".

Cyber warfare has increased rapidly in scale and sophistication with China accused of being at the forefront of prominent recent attacks, including the targeting of Google and 20 other companies last year as well as "Titan Rain" in 2003 a series of coordinated attacks on US networks. Russian and North Korean hackers have also been accused of large-scale attacks.

Moscow was accused of being behind a massive cyber assault on Estonia in 2007 the second largest cyber warfare operation ever conducted.

While Alexander has tried to play down the offensive aspects of his command, the Pentagon has been more explicit, stating on Friday that Cyber Command will "direct the operations and defence of specified Department of Defense information networks [involving some 90,000 military personnel] and prepare to, when directed, conduct full-spectrum military cyberspace operations in order to enable actions in all domains, [to] ensure US allied freedom of action in cyberspace and deny the same to our adversaries."

The complex issues facing Cyber Command were thrown into relief earlier this year when the Washington Post revealed details of a so-called "dot-mil" operation by Fort Meade's cyber warfare unit, backed by Alexander, to shut down a "honeytrap website" set up by the Saudis and the CIA to target Islamist extremists planning attacks in Saudi Arabia.

The Pentagon became convinced that the forum was being used to co-ordinate the entry of jihadi fighters into Iraq.

Despite the strong objections of the CIA, the site was attacked by the Fort Meade cyber warfare unit. As a result, some 300 other servers in the Saudi kingdom, Germany and Texas also were inadvertently shut down.

Of equally concern to those who had opposed the operation, it was conducted without informing key members of the Saudi royal family, who were reported to be "furious" that a counter-terrorism tool had been shut down.

The issue of cyber warfare and how to combat it has become an increasingly fraught one.

The need to have electronic warfare capabilities, say those who support them, has been proven repeatedly by the apparent success of hostile attacks on government networks, including last year's massive denial of service assault on networks in both the US and Korea.

Last year, hackers also accessed large amounts of sensitive data concerning the Pentagon's Joint Strike Fighter programme.

The difficulties facing the new command were underlined in March by former CIA director Michael V Hayden, who said that the Saudi operation had demonstrated that cyber warfare techniques were evolving so rapidly that they were now outpacing the government's ability to develop coherent policies to guide its use.

"Cyber was moving so fast that we were always in danger of building up precedent before we built up policy," Hayden said.

Facebook is changing its service so an individual's details aren't available to all

Everyone knows they ought to examine the small print of any contract they sign. Few actually do. We are especially cavalier about giving our consent for things we haven't read in order to access services online. Nearly always there is a box somewhere on the website seeking confirmation that users have understood the terms and conditions. Usually, when we tick that box to say "yes", we are lying.

Does it matter? The answer depends on whether or not we care what happens to data about ourselves, our habits, our purchases, our preferences. The hidden price of most ostensibly "free" web services is some surrender of privacy. It is time the terms of that trade were more openly negotiated.

To an extent, that is starting to happen. Facebook is in the process of hurriedly changing the privacy regime it offers users after coming under attack by regulators and consumer activists.

Late last year, Facebook changed default settings on accounts in a way that pushed mountains of information people had uploaded about themselves into wider public view. There was an immediate backlash and the company is now expected to make it easier for people to hide themselves away.

Facebook is also being pushed into a retreat over technology that mines its pages for information to share with other websites.

The company has tended to operate on the assumption that whatever users post on their pages is fair game to be spread liberally around the web. That, executives are now starting to realise, is not what people thought they were signing up for. (Although technically, by checking the necessary boxes, signing up for it is exactly what they did do.)

The tension is hard-wired into Facebook's business model and indeed into the models of countless other online services: social networking, content-sharing, search.

The culture of the web demands that these tools come without a price tag. But they are not public services. They are commercial enterprises that want, quite reasonably, to make money. Since they cannot charge entry fees, they harvest data, a commodity that can be traded with other sites or used as a lure for advertisers.

The more personal detail a site has about its users, the more it can charge third parties to make sales pitches to them.

Most web users have no idea of the extent to which companies routinely monitor their behaviour online, scanning emails for key words, crawling around their computer's memory to see what kinds of sites they like, remembering where they have been and clocking who they communicate with most.

The purpose of all of this snooping is forensically to tailor marketing messages to an individual's particular requirements. A user of Google's gmail service, for example, who emails friends to discuss a holiday will have adverts for travel sites embedded in the reply.

This, the companies insist, is part of what makes them great services. Seeing adverts for things you want is, after all, surely better that seeing adverts for things you don't want. There is, meanwhile, no great clamour for these services to charge for access. So there is no alternative revenue stream.

Facebook has 500 million users. Perhaps those people simply don't grasp what is happening with their data. But, just as plausibly, they don't really care.

One reason companies feel entitled to invade their customers' privacy is because the customers appear to seize on every available opportunity to invade their own privacy. One of the most dramatic cultural changes of the last decade is the way in which it has become normal to publish the content of personal interactions.

Intimacy used to be defined by the fact of an action or conversation taking place with no witnesses. That is no longer true. Intimate moments can be shared with potentially millions of people.

Arguably, the sense of entitlement we feel to conduct much of our lives in a secret, personal realm is a relatively recent innovation. Before the 20th century, the kind of privacy we now take for granted having endless rooms of our own would have seemed like strange seclusion; demanding it would have been a sign of eccentricity or aristocratic caprice.

Perhaps new technology is sending the pendulum back. We are entering an age where everybody knows, and is entitled to know, what everybody else is up to. That is certainly the impression we get when newspapers report private conversations and publish intimate text messages between pairs of consenting adult lovers.

There is not, it seems, much currency in the belief, rooted in liberal ethics as well as social protocol, that certain things are simply nobody else's business.

But privacy is a wonderful innovation. It should not be surrendered lightly.

That realisation does appear to be dawning on consumers, regulators and politicians. But so far, in the UK at least, the emphasis has been overwhelmingly on privacy violations by the state. That is because, throughout history, state intrusion into citizens' personal lives has been a tool of repression. The impulse to check such intrusion is behind the inclusion in the Liberal Democrat-Conservative coalition agreement of plans to regulate CCTV, scale back government databases and scrap ID cards. Those are all welcome reforms.

But the last government did not build an apparatus of surveillance with the primary objective of crushing political dissent in the manner of the old East German Stasi. It did it, for the most part, under the apprehension often misguided that public services would be made more efficient: cameras would fight crime; ID cards prevent fraud; databases speed up delivery. That doesn't mean the government was right to overlook privacy issues. It was derelict in doing so.

It is none the less worth remembering that the state has followed the private sector in assuming that most people don't care about privacy as long as they get the desired product a safer street or a snazzier Facebook profile.

The fact that many people undervalue their personal data does not stop it being a precious commodity.

Nor does it diminish the responsibility of those with the power to collect data to seek permission. Consent must never be presumed. That principle must apply in the marketplace just as it does to the state.

Social networking site founder faces an online rebellion by users who accuse him of exploiting their data

Millions of users of Facebook are being urged to take part in the most dramatic "screenwipe" in history a week tomorrow. People are being asked to end their addiction to the social networking site by closing their accounts and turning billions of family videos, photographs and "friend requests" into little more than digital debris.

Two Canadian campaigners have declared 31 May as Quit Facebook Day in protest at the company's decision to make more of that valuable personal data available to advertisers without the users' permission or, in some cases, without their knowledge. Their protest reflects a growing feeling of unease about how internet giants such as Facebook and Google, and upstarts like Twitter, use the information we give them.

It also completes a miserable few weeks for Facebook's 26-year-old founder Mark Zuckerberg, the whiz-kid who lists "openness", "revolutions" and "making things" in the interests section of his own Facebook page. Zuckerberg is facing a rebellion by users over privacy and has been warned by regulators in Europe and the US that the company may be in danger of breaching data protection laws.

Worse still, a new Hollywood film produced by Kevin Spacey, The Social Network, is set to portray an even younger Zuckerberg, who set up Facebook six years ago after being dumped by his girlfriend while studying at Harvard, as a sexually insecure computer nerd.

For the first time there is a danger that the fairytale about the man from White Plains, New York, who turned a site for his college friends into a global phenomenon might not have a happy ending.

In truth, the great Facebook revolt is unlikely to happen overnight. The social networking site is weeks away from announcing its 500 millionth registered user and is still expanding at a healthy rate. Nearly 40% of the world's internet users have a Facebook page they have visited at least once in the past month and it is not just the young who use it; 28% of the site's users are older than 34, a demographic that has plenty of cash to spend.

In terms of scale, if not profits, Facebook is second only to Google. A small rebellion by a few thousand users is unlikely to dent its prospects. Yet recent changes to the site's privacy settings, which determine how much personal information users can keep hidden, have prompted an outcry that senior executives, Zuckerberg included, cannot ignore.

At a stroke, the company made most of that information accessible to other users by default last month, although it continued to allow subscribers to apply restrictions to who can see what, should they choose to. Those "privacy settings" are complicated to change, however users are faced with a menu with up to 150 options and few can work out how to do so; many have concluded Facebook is simply trying to hoodwink consumers into sharing more information than they would like. For an internet company that has built its reputation on honesty and openness, and grown rapidly by exploiting the good feeling that surrounds a medium in its infancy, there can be few more damaging allegations.

A routine executive meeting at Facebook's Californian headquarters earlier this month turned into an emergency discussion about privacy amid fears that pushing through the changes without consultation might do irreparable damage to the company. Simon Davies, a former consultant turned privacy campaigner who knows most of Facebook's senior management team, says: "My information from the people who participated is there is a sense the company has gone off the rails somewhat and realistically it could go downhill. The feeling in the meeting, as I understand it, was that, right or wrong, [the] privacy [issue] was damaging the company and that, right or wrong, something has to change."

The company is likely to simplify its privacy settings, possibly as soon as this week. It is reported to be planning to introduce a "master control" that would simplify users' privacy settings. Users would be able to choose which groups of people they wished to share information with everyone, friends of friends, or just friends. This would replace the automatic system that shares users' information with third parties.

The planned move acknowledges the fact that, as Zuckerberg told Time magazine: "What people want isn't complete privacy. It isn't that they want secrecy. It's that they want control over what they share and what they don't."

This may not assuage wider concerns about how our digital footprints can be exploited, however. The novelty of tracking down an old school friend or boasting about how many people attended your birthday party has given way to anxiety over whether we might have given away too much. Facebook has been criticised for failing to address concerns that paedophiles are using the site to identify and "groom" potential victims.

"It has been exposed to more public relations problems in the last 18 months than any social network business can bear," Davies claims. Potentially more serious, however, is growing anger among Facebook users over the company's determination to mine their personal data for commercial gain.

The company's office campus, in Palo Alto, a community of 50,000 people in the San Francisco Bay area, is a large but unremarkable space that was once occupied by computer giant Hewlett Packard. It's open plan and with high ceilings, and employees can break off from their work to play table tennis; bikes litter the floor; and some of the lifts have been painted by a New York graffiti artist.

Visitors describe the atmosphere as "orderly yet bohemian". Yet behind the trendy fa ade, the company is carrying out a prosaic task, collecting information for what is in effect the largest and most sophisticated direct marketing exercise ever undertaken. Facebook is handing over information about its users' favourite films, brand of coffee, what car they drive, even their shopping habits, to companies that will pay handsomely for it. Selling data to "third parties" underpins the company's business model, which, like that of many internet companies, is built on acquiring huge scale and reach quickly, then making money later.

The company is worth about 10bn, but that valuation is based on optimistic expectations about future profits. Banner advertising can generate only so much cash. If shareholders, including Microsoft (which paid 117m for a 1.6% stake in 2007) are to see a return on their investment, Zuckerberg must persuade users that even a free service like Facebook comes with a price in this case allowing big corporations a glimpse of their spending habits.

Facebook users did not sign up in order to be targeted by marketers, of course, and the internet has proved resistant to overt commercialisation in the past. When Rupert Murdoch's News Corp bought MySpace for $580m in July 2005, the company used it to plug its own products and the site's hip audience of teenage music fans soon began to search for other online hangouts.

Most observers predict that Facebook is too well established to go the way of Friends Reunited, Bebo or Excite, internet fads that failed to turn overnight popularity into lasting success. But if Facebook flirts too brazenly with commercial partners, it may see its growth slow down dramatically.

On his own Facebook profile, Zuckerberg demonstrates he still has the right credentials to claim membership of the IT fraternity by listing The Matrix, Dark Knight, Iron Man and Star Wars among his favourite films. The enigmatic Facebook founder also lists "eliminating desire" as one of his interests, alongside "breaking things".

Breaking Facebook now would be a remarkable achievement, given its global dominance. But in order to fix it, Zuckerberg must resolve the tension between what users want to tell Facebook about themselves and what Facebook wants to tell other companies about them.